History of Mill Meadows

Mill Meadows has been a Local Nature Reserve since 1994. However it has a rich history spanning centuries, encompassing land, buildings and families, which has shaped the place it is today…

The land that makes up Mill Meadows can be traced back to the Saxon period when it was part of the Manor of Great Burstead. In 1066 it was given to Odo the Bishop of Bayeux until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536 when it was given to Sir Richard Riche. By 1593 a windmill is recorded on the site, and it is believed this mill together with another built by Thomas Wood in 1777 gave Mill Meadows its name.

In 1600 it was sold to Sir John Petre, the Baron of Writtle, and became part of his estatewhich includes Thorndon Hall, Writtle Park and Ingatestone Hall. The Petre family had tenants on the land. They were typically gentleman farmers who used the land for grazing for horses, cows, pigs and hens. Over the next two centuries the land remained in use as farmland, with the tenancy and ownership changing. The 17 fields that make up Mill Meadows today are taken from the property transactions that used field and tenants' names to identify them. Mill Meadows have retained the field names to preserve this ancient tradition.

In 1787 John Ward, a wealthy business man from Surrey, began a process of acquisitionwhich was to put ownership of Mill Meadows within the Ward family until 1961. In 1961 much of the land of Mill Meadows was sold to the Metropolitan Railway Country Estates (MRCE) for housing development, which took place from 1960–1980. The remainder of the area was sold to Basildon District Council in 1991 who have since managed it as the local nature reserve we know today.

A windmill located on Bell Hill was first recorded in the 1560s. In the 1593 survey the copyholder was Thomas Andrews who also had 24 acres of land believed to be mostly on the western side of Southend Road.

Thomas Wood, the famous 18th Century Billericay miller was born on the 30th November 1719 to Abraham and Mary Wood in Mill Cottages. By the age of 13 he had survived the many illnesses that killed a great number of children at that time, including smallpox.

Gatwick House is a Grade II listed building, situated just off Southend Road. A building has existed on this site since 1593, however the building we see today dates from 1745. This date is carved into a floor timber and a brick in the chimney dating the rear part of the house.

Brickmaking took place in this field during the the mid 1800s, on a small scale, to serve local demands, and the 1874 edition of the Ordnance Survey shows a brick kiln in the field on the western side of Greens Farm Lane.

In order to boost its profits the Metropolitan Railway needed more passengers. So in 1919 a separate limited company, The Metropolitan Railway Country Estates (MRCE), was set up to manage and develop its nearby land into housing estates.